'When this economic disaster began to trigger workers' protests in late spring and early summer, Lech Walesa broke publicly with the government.'

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every single one. In elections to the Senate, they had captured 99 out of 100 seats. The resulting disarray and splits in the PZPR and its allies, the Peasants' Party and the Democratic Party, allowed Solidarity to form a coalition government with the latter two.

This coalition was dominated by Solidarity from the start, with Mazowiecki firmly in control of events. Solidarity was united behind him, and his government symbolized the wisdom of the "road of dialogue" pursued at the round table——a negotiated road to parliamentary democracy and the free market, with the blessing of the Stalinist PZPR.

Today, the strategy Mazowiecki symbolized is discredited. His defeat could scarcely have been more decisive. Yet he was supported in this campaign by all the important media: by the TV and radio, and four out of five national daily newspapers. He received public declarations of support from almost every well-known intellectual and artist, from film directors, actors, and actresses.

And it was no secret that a Mazowiecki victory was the favored option of the West (German leader Kohl was particularly open about this), of the Vatican, and of the Kremlin. To all of these, Mazowiecki seemed to offer the best hope of stability. So what happened? What has changed so much in Poland over the last year?

The "Balcerowicz Plan"

The single biggest factor working against Mazowiecki was undoubtedly the dramatic economic recession his government has created (quite deliberately).

The assumption behind the "Balcerowicz Plan" (named after Vice Premier Balcerowicz, who drafted the government's economic program, following instructions) is that the Polish economy needs "shock therapy" to assist restructuring and check inflation. The government has committed itself to driving down wages and forcing companies to cut back employment. This is to ensure higher profitability in the enterprises which DECEMBER 1990 survive, allowing their gradual privatization.

The Balcerowicz Plan was put into effect on Jan. 1 this year. The effects have been catastrophic. Unemployment, virtually nonexistent previously, has climbed to 1,100,000 within 11 months. At the start of the year, government officials were warning of 400,000 possibly jobless in the future: now unemployment is predicted to reach 3 million, perhaps 4 million, next year.

Rising prices coupled with wage restraints meant that real incomes declined 43 percent in the first half of the year—a record for postwar Europe. Thousands of construction projects in health and education have been abandoned. Tens of thousands of familyowned production and repair businesses have folded.

Inflation is still continuing, albeit more slowly on average. Yet certain prices are leaping upwards: particularly housing, coal and electricity, and public transport. Many articles and services which were heavily subsidized only a few months ago are now very expensive, including some medicines.

Government members themselves seem stunned by the scale of the devastation they have caused by obeying IMF orders. As the months have passed, their defense of government economic policy has become restricted to one sentence, repeated over and over again: "There is no other road than the free market."

Walesa breaks with Mazowiecki When this economic disaster began to trigger workers' protests in late spring and early summer, Lech Walesa suddenly broke publicly with the government. Warning that discontent could soon become explosive, he demanded the government "speed things up.' This "speed-up," he explained, meant quicker economic reforms and immediate political changes—in particular, the removal of Jaruzelski and free elections to both the presidency and the Sejm, the parliament.

For workers throughout Poland, it seemed as if Walesa was once again coming to their nite policy, one which has gathered him as many friends as unemployment and recession have produced enemies for Mazowiecki. This policy has come to be know as "the ax."

The ax in question is one that Walesa says he will use to behead the nomenklatura-the network of Stalinist bureaucrats who have remained in positions of power, untouched by the Mazowiecki government. The popular hostility to these people is intense, and the current government is believed to be protecting them.

This is perfectly true; indeed, it is a direct consequence of the round-table agreement. In return for allowing "democratization," the Stalinists successfully demand that no reprisals be taken against them, leaving them free to exploit their accumulated wealth and connections in the new free market. This reflects the common denominator that enables a deal to be struck at the round tableboth the Solidarity leadership and the Stalinist bureaucracy believed it was now time to move toward the restoration of capitalism in Poland.

The Stalinist bureaucrats were quite happy to grant a degree of democracy and civil rights, correctly estimating that they were the only real force in Poland-apart from marginal groups of profiteers and black-market businessmen-who could reap the full benefits of an economy based on maximizing private profits.

The "Schnappsgate" scandal And so it has been. The bureaucrats have used the new market mechanisms to enrich themselves at lightning speed, taking over state assets to set up their own private companies. The bureaucrats have been quick to master all the tricks of "legitimate" capitalist swindles and corporate theft. Small wonder, then, that Walesa has gained enormous support for this promise to give the bureaucrats a taste of his "ax."

'These people," Walesa said, "oppressed us for over 40 years. Now they're supposed to have been overthrown. Only we get poorer every day and they get richer." This is a common view. These feelings are also aggravated by the general suspicion that Mazowiecki's supporters, particularly those in and around parliament, are engaging in the same kind of dealings as their former Stalinist opponents.

A number of economic scandals-including one whose massive profits were made from illicit alcohol imports, with at least indirect involvement by some deputies (since dubbed "Schnappsgate") have confirmed the (continued on next page)

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Polish coal miners have threatened militant strikes against government austerity plans.

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suspicion that Poland's current rulers have become just as dishonest as the former ones.

These, then, were the two pillars of Walesa's election campaign: first, a sharp attack on the government for losing all control over the economy, and second, a pledge to square accounts with the Stalinists.

Both involved breathtaking demagogy, however. On the first point—because Walesa has no alternative to the free-market reforms other than "speeding them up," which could only mean speeding up the growth of unemployment and speeding up the fall in living standards!

On the second-because Walesa is just as guilty as Mazowiecki of letting the Stalinists off the hook. After all, it was Walesa who hosted the "round table," along with the notorious Stalinist Minister of Internal Afairs, General Kiszczak. And he kept silent about the role the bureaucrats were playing in the "new Poland" until the workers' strikes of late spring forced him to distance himself from the government.

More important, the popular desire to see the Stalinists finally weeded out in fact represents a deep aspiration toward democracy. The continued power of the bureaucracy is interpreted as a sign that real power has still to be passed into the hands of the people. Real power lies elsewhere.

Walesa is no democrat Yet Walesa is no democrat. He is arguably more anti-democratic than Mazowiecki, although the two are a fairly even match in this respect. (The portrayal of Mazowiecki in the Western press as an apostle of democracy is ridiculous nonsense: This man was a deputy for nearly 20 years in the Stalinist parliament of the '60s and "70s.)

Walesa has fully supported the Mazowiecki government's most reactionary moves: the introduction of Catholic religious education in state schools, the bill to ban abortion (linked to prison sentences), and the restriction of access to divorce by placing it under the jurisdiction of higher courts (which are fewer in number, thus lengthening the waiting time for divorce proceedings).

Walesa has made no attempt to compel the government to repeal the restrictions on trade-union freedoms still in force, which were introduced by Jaruzelski during martial law. He is hostile to democracy in the workplace and supports strengthening the police and army.

Moreover, he has stated his intention of trying to rule Poland by presidential decree. Clearly, the workers' hopes that Walesa will fulfill Solidarity's original democratic vision are totally misplaced.

On top of all this come Walesa's allies, who make up a frightening array of the most reactionary forces in Poland, all eager to jump on Walesa's bandwagon. These include many groups which are fiercely clericalist and authoritarian. Some have made a determined effort to give Walesa's campaign an anti-Semitic character, equating his promised purge of Stalinists with a purge of Jews who acy are allegedly "behind" the Mazowieckı government. Here Walesa has tried to play a scandalous double game: publicly criticizing anti-Sernitism in one breath, and then in the next proudly declaring that he has proof that he himself is of "pure" Polish stock.

From the start, it was obvious Walesa would win the first round. A vote for him was a vote against the government; it was a protest at both falling living standards and the transformation of yesterday's Stalinists into today's capitalists. This protest was one most Poles were eager to express.

"Stan who?"

In this situation, Walesa could have easily gained over 50 percent in the first round of voting and been elected triumphantly. This did not happen because of the spectacular success of "Stan" Tyminski in beating Mazowiecki into third place, quite obviously capturing most of his votes from the Walesa camp.

At the beginning of the campaign, Tyminski's name elicited only one response: "Who?" He was ignored by the media and taken seriously by no one. All that was known about him was that he had left Poland in the mid-1960s and made a small fortune doing business in Canada and Peru.

The leader of an obscure party in Canada, he had decided to return to Poland and run for the presidency, so he claimed, with the sole purpose of presenting his economic views to the Polish public.

These views, at the beginning of the campaign, turned out to be no different from those of the other candidates; i.e., a blind faith in the miraculous powers of a free market.

Tyminski's campaign was to change dramatically, however. To understand why, we must look at the more general developments in Poland over the last weeks.

Rising tide of protest the beginning, the election Poland: paign was accompanied by a rising tide of workers' protests and strike actions. It became apparent that, while ready to vote for Walesa, workers were not prepared to wait until he was elected and none too sure he would actually deliver on his campaign promises. They were intent on fighting for better conditions immediately, themselves.

Despite a call from Solidarity's national trade-union executive for a total strike moratorium during the election campaign, one group of workers after another took action. The railworkers were followed by retail workers in dozens of cities. Farmers stepped up protests they had been conducting interMunicipal transport workers struck repeatedly across the country. In Cracow, they occupied the bus and tram depots for nine days, with no normal public transport in the streets whatsoever. Various engineering factories held one-day stoppages, or "rolling" strikes, with a different department out each day (including the giant Ursus tractor factory in Warsaw, employing 25,000).

Finally, five days before the first-round vote, Poland's coal miners held a one-day strike, warning that they would call an indefinite strike after the elections if their demands were not met. In two pits, a number of miners began a hunger strike (which continued through the first round of voting and is still continuing as I write).

In every case, the demands were for higher pay, almost always accompanied by calls for internal restructuring, guarantees of job security, and the return of government subsidies.

Outflanks other candidates

The effect of all this was to change the terms of debate in the elections. Midway through the campaign, Tyminski declared that the privatization bill passed by the Sejm should be revoked. He thereby outflanked all the other candidates from the left.

This call was later to be echoed by the other "minor" candidates, with the notable exception of the Stalinist Cimosrewicz, who had been talking of "capitalism with a human face" and underlining his own commitment to privatizations. This bureaucrat's campaign spokesman denounced Tyminski announced it would take disciplinary measures against the miners' and transport workers' sections for breaking the strike moratorium, Tyminiski declared that he supported "every strike taking place in Poland today. The workers are not to blame for wanting better living standards. The blame lies with the government."

The result: a complete unknown, "Stan" Tyminski, self-proclaimed "citizen of Poland, Canada, and Peru" who has not been resident in Poland for over 25 years, received nearly one-fourth of all votes cast.

Unserious explanations

In some sections of the Polish press, and most particularly in the first reactions of the Western press, Tyminski's success has been attributed to his image as a self-made expatriate millionaire. People voted for him, the theory goes, because they want to be like him-rich and successful.

This is a completely unserious explanation of why millions of Poles voted as they did. Tyminski's support picked up as he began to attack the effects of the market reforms (unusual for a millionaire, admittedly).

The composition of his electorate is revealing: He won half of all votes cast by those under 25 years of age. And it is the youth who are being hit hardest by the reforms and recession-no perspectives, no jobs, no housing.

Geographically, he obtained the greatest support in Upper Silesia, the center of Poland's heavy industry. It is clear his call to halt privatizations had a big impact on the steelworkers and striking miners of Silesia. In some mining districts het got 60 percent of the vote!

The day after the first-round poll, Tyminski thanked the voters of Silesia and said he would be visiting large plants in the region to ask the workers what they thought of privatizations. (A study of workers' opinions in large factories, published in September, showed 37 percent for continued state ownership, 36 percent for workers' group ownership or share schemes, and only 14 percent for straightforward privatizations of the factories, as the government plans.)